The Trouble with Murder

by Kathy Krevat

  I tossed my disgusting flip flops and the poop-covered wipe in the garbage and used the garden hose to clean my feet before heading inside.

  “Your phone rang,” my dad called out from the living room over the sound of Storage Wars, his favorite show.

  I grabbed my cell and headed back to the stove, tripping over the now-loving cat who wound around my ankles and purred, clearly saying, “I wuv you so much. Isn’t it time to taste test?”

  My Meowio Batali Gourmet Cat Food was marketed as organic food for the discerning cat, and many of my customers welcomed the most exotic of spices. But if Trouble didn’t like it, I dropped it. I’d learned early on that she never steered me wrong. If she liked it, it sold. If she didn’t like it, other cats didn’t either.

  My whole business was inspired by Trouble. I’d found her, not even six weeks old, abandoned in an apartment when a tenant skipped out on the rent. Elliott and I immediately fell in love with her tiny orange face and white paws, and adopted her. Because of the splash of white on her chest, Elliott had originally wanted to call her Skimbleshanks, after a cat character in the musical Cats.

  She’d had a lot of digestive problems, and the only food she could handle was what I made. That, combined with her natural kitten mischievousness, earned her the name Trouble.

  Soon, friends started asking to buy little jars of the same food for their cats, which is how I learned that there was a demand for organic, human-grade cat food. I increased my production, cooking at odd hours when I could sneak it in around my job managing the apartment building where we lived.

  When I’d tried to expand to farmers’ markets, I learned there were a lot of regulations I’d have to follow to make it a real business, including cooking all the food sold at the market in a certified kitchen.

  My previous customers still demanded my original products, including the cute packaging, so I spent at least one morning a week indulging them. Their cats had benefitted from me learning how to add vitamins and other goodies to make the food more nutritious.

  I’d already been up for hours cooking and packaging my Chicken & Sage Indulgence. The herbal smell bothered Elliott and my dad, so I liked to get the kitchen aired out before they even woke up. Trouble absolutely loved that recipe–she’d come running the moment the sage hit the sizzling olive oil and yelled at me to give her tidbits the whole time I was cooking. When I was done with production, I switched to trying new recipes.

  My phone had a message from my best friend, Lani, but I had to finish up the chicken liver curry dish before calling her back. I’d also received an alert that someone had given my business a review on SDHelp. I clicked over to the site and saw that a J. Greene had given me one star!

  I opened the app to read the review. I bought this cat food at the local flea market—

  Flea market? It’s a farmers’ market, idiot. There’s a big difference. I read on.

  I had high hopes for this locally-produced, organic cat food, but my cat took one bite and walked away. I couldn’t taste it–even I don’t love my cat that much–but I sniffed it and it smelled awful. A combination of chemicals and rotten meat. Will never buy again.

  What? That was impossible. I’d never had a bad review like this. Once someone complained about the price, but I’d never be able to compete price-wise with the big guys. What should I do? Ignore it? Contact Mr. J. Greene and offer to replace it?

  I put a few pieces of curried chicken into the refrigerator to cool while I mentally ran through my process. Since my dad got sick, I hadn’t always been in the commercial kitchen the two mornings a week I could afford to rent, relying on my cook who always followed my instructions meticulously. Could something have gone wrong with one batch? But then I would hear from more than one customer. I clicked on the website to see if anyone had left a complaint there. Nothing. I took a deep breath. Maybe it was an isolated incident. Or total bull.

  To reassure myself, I turned to the page that had testimonials from my customers. So many of them noted how much healthier their cats were because they ate Meowio food.

  “Mom!” Elliott yelled as he ran down the stairs, landing at the bottom with a thud. My son rarely did anything quietly.

  I met him in the hall while my dad silenced the TV and stuck his head out to see what was going on.

  “I got a callback for Horton!” Elliott announced as he threw his arms in the air in triumph and then fell on the floor in a dramatic faint, clutching his phone to his chest.

  “That’s awesome,” I said, pushing back the guilt that I’d totally forgotten about his audition for theater summer camp. Starting on Monday, he’d be spending two weeks with a bunch of other drama kids on a musical—his idea of heaven. On the last Friday, the whole camp would perform Seussical the Musical. “Isn’t Horton one of the leads?” The musical incorporated a couple of Dr. Seuss books into one plot including Horton Hears a Who.

  Elliott rolled himself up and jumped to his feet, his dark brown hair flopping over one eye. “Yes!”

  “Congratulations, kid,” I said, delighted for him. “When’s the audition?”

  He clicked on his phone, reading farther down the email he’d received. His face fell. “Uh-oh,” he said. “It’s this Thursday afternoon.”

  That was one of my farmers’ market days and my biggest sales day. My best customers knew they could find me every Thursday afternoon in downtown San Diego, selling my cat food with Trouble watching over the booth in her little chef hat. I’d already paid for my prime spot.

  I forced a smile. “It’s okay,” I said. “We’ll just go to the market late.”

  “I can take him,” my dad called out from the living room.

  Elliott’s eyes widened and he shook his head in a silent plea.

  Oh man. I had to handle this carefully. “It’s okay, Dad. I love going to Elliott’s auditions,” I said in a light tone. “And he can help me at the market afterward.”

  He subsided with a “harrumph.” Normally having my dad drive Elliott might work, but he hadn’t driven much since he got out of the hospital. And this was Elliott’s first time auditioning for the Sunnyside Junior Theater, and he didn’t know anyone. Even when Elliott tried out for his old theater group where he felt comfortable, he had to be managed carefully so he went into his audition feeling confident. And my dad hadn’t been very supportive of anything Elliott did that wasn’t sports-related.

  Elliott let out his breath. He and my dad had gotten along on our short visits over the years, but hadn’t found much common ground since we’d moved in. My dad wouldn’t admit to needing help after his second devastating bout with pneumonia. My macho, football-playing father hated being weak and being forced to accept support from the same daughter he’d driven out of the house thirteen years ago.

  And he wouldn’t say it out loud, but it was clear he wasn’t happy with Elliott’s fashion choices. Especially the way Elliott shaved one side of his head and allowed the other to grow long. From the photos of my own grunge days in high school, I knew Elliott would regret that look in the future, but he had to make his own fashion mistakes.

  “The director sent me the sheet music for ‘Alone in the Universe,’ and I only have two days to learn it. I’m gonna go practice.” Elliott ran back up to his room, taking the stairs a couple at a time.

  “Break a leg!” I called after him. I smiled, caught up in his enthusiasm.

  Until my dad “harrumphed” again from the living room.

  I took a deep breath, determined to let my dad’s bad attitude go. He’s sick, I told myself and headed back to the kitchen.

  But he didn’t stop. “I don’t know why you let him do that nonsense,” he said, lighting my simmering anger.

  I did a U-turn at the kitchen doorway and stomped into the living room. “What nonsense? Having fun with other kids? Developing his talents? Pursuing a dream?”

  My dad scowle
d. “Singing and dancing’s not preparing him for the future.”

  “He’s twelve, Dad,” I said sarcastically. “He has time. And you think playing with a ball on a field prepares him for the future?”

  “It sure does,” he said, defensive. “It teaches teamwork. And following the rules. Something both of ya could learn.” He sat back in his chair, and suddenly he seemed smaller in it. Had he lost more weight?

  My anger washed out of me. “He loves it, Dad,” I said, my voice calmer. “And there’s a heck of a lot of teamwork going on behind the scenes and on stage.” I’d seen it first-hand during the obligatory volunteering that went along with any kind of youth theater.

  He narrowed his eyes, as if trying to figure out if I was just feeling sorry for him. Then he turned the TV sound back on with his remote. Storage Wars characters were trying to goad each other into bidding higher on someone’s junk.

  “It’s a good thing my investments are paying off so I can help with his college,” he grumbled as I took a step to the door. “My new fund is up a full twenty percent this month.”

  “What?” I asked. “You have investments?”

  “Of course I have investments,” he said, bristling again. “You think I’m an idiot?”

  “No,” I said. I couldn’t imagine having enough money for “investments.” “You’re helping with Elliott’s college?”

  “Of course I am,” he said. “He’s not getting a singing scholarship, is he?”

  I gaped at him. That comment had so many levels of insult that I couldn’t think of a retort to cover them all.

  Luckily my phone rang before any sound could come out of my mouth. I counted to ten on the way back to the kitchen and answered it.

  “Oh. My. God,” Lani said, her voice breaking up a little over her car Bluetooth connection. “I’m gonna kill Piper.”

  “Good morning to you too,” I said. Piper was her wife and Lani threatened to kill her about once a week, usually for no good reason.

  I pulled out the now cool pieces of chicken curry and put them in Trouble’s dish. She sniffed it, and then took a bite. Her lips curled back as she chewed. Then she spit it out.

  Shoot. There goes that recipe. Unless I tried it again with less curry?

  “She threw out my latest prototype! On purpose!” I heard Lani’s car engine zoom in the background, as if it was angry at Piper too.

  Lani was the owner and creator of Find Your Re-Purpose, an online boutique of unique baby fashions recycled from used clothing. She cut up old clothing, sewed different materials together, added some fabric paint or other touches, and voila! A beautiful, one-of-a-kind, hundred dollar outfit that anyone with too much money could buy for a baby who would most likely spit up on it in less than five minutes.

  We’d met years before when she was the costume designer for one of Elliott’s plays, and quickly figured out that she lived in my dad’s neighborhood. After a few sleepless nights of last minute costume adjustments before the show’s opening, we’d become best friends.

  “Was it that cape idea you were kicking around?” I asked.

  “Yes!” she said. “It was the cutest thing EV-ER!”

  I’d had my own doubts about the safety of capes for infants, but had kept them to myself. Since Piper was a pediatrician, I knew she’d step in. “Where are you headed?” I asked, trying to distract her.

  “Ventura,” she said. “A thrift shop just got a big donation of clothes from a rich European family who spent the last six months in Malibu. The material has a bunch of cool designs the shop owner has never seen before so he put them aside for me. I can’t wait to see them.”

  Ventura was almost four hours from Sunnyside, which meant Lani would be gone most of the day. Since she liked company on her trip, I put her on speaker phone right by the stove, resumed my stirring, and settled in for a long conversation.

  “Have you heard from Twomey’s yet?” she asked, with a change in her tone that meant now-it’s-time-for-friendly-nagging. She’d encouraged me to contact the local chain of seven organic food stores offering my cat food products.

  “Not yet,” I admitted. In my e-mail, I’d pushed the fact that buying local was all the rage, especially for the kind of people who bought organic products to help save the planet.

  Seeing Meowio Batali products on the shelves of that many stores would be a dream come true. But I wasn’t sure how I’d meet any significant increase in demand without hiring more people. And that took money.

  I was pretty stretched already—both physically and money-wise. Too bad cloning me wasn’t an option yet. If I had two, maybe three more of me, I could do everything I should be doing.

  I changed the subject. “Hey, I finally met my neighbor.”

  “That cute chicken farmer?” she asked.

  I turned on the frying pan and dribbled in extra virgin olive oil. “How’d you know he was cute?”

  “Everyone knows he’s cute,” she said. “He’s also single, keeps to himself and hasn’t dated at all.”

  “Good to know,” I said. I told her all about the chicks and the unfortunate poop incident.

  “That’s such a meet cute!” she said. “You can tell your grandchildren that story where you fell in love with his chicks first.”

  “I think if there’s poop involved, it’s the exact opposite of a meet cute,” I said. “And I really don’t have time to date right now.”

  “You know, it’s really a little like Romeo and Juliet, except with your cat and chickens,” she said. “Joss is a Montague and you’re the Cat-ulets.” She giggled at her own joke.

  “And you know how they ended up.” I tossed chunks of chicken in the pan. “Hey, did you head out of town on purpose so I couldn’t drag you to my Power Moms trade show?”

  “Oh yeah,” she said unapologetically. “It’s the only reason I chose today to drive to freakin’ Ventura. Just to get away from your cult.”

  I laughed. The Sunnyside Power Moms, or SPMs for short, was a group of home business owners who worked together to network and support each other. Our leader, Twila Jenkins, got the idea to start the group when the third mom came up to her at the Sunnyside Elementary School playground to invite her to a party at her house. One of those “parties” where the host/salesperson puts out lovely hors d’oeuvres and lots of wine so that her guests, i.e., sales targets, will feel more inclined to buy thirty dollar candles and forty-five dollar candle holders.

  Twila had invited me to join after learning about my cat food business.

  “You’ll come around,” I said. “The first step was when you suggested your friend Fawn become an SPM. You’re one step closer to becoming One of Us. One of Us.” I chanted that in a low tone a few times until she interrupted me.

  “Not a chance,” she said. “Hey! You should manufacture some kind of scandal. That’ll get people interested in your little coven.”

  I rolled my eyes, even though she couldn’t see me. “Be nice or I’ll sign you up to host a candle party at your house.”

  She gasped dramatically. “A fate worse than death.”

  Chapter 2

  A fate worse than death.

  I couldn’t help but remember Lani’s words when I was attacked by a gang of rabid soccer moms waiting outside the activity center in Twila’s gated community. Twila had given the gate code to everyone, but she’d given only me the key code to the building. I was totally on time, but that wasn’t enough for these over-achievers.

  With everyone waiting by my shoulder, I fumbled a few times as I entered it, and finally got it right. Each digit played a musical note and then the door buzzed.

  “Sounds like Beethoven’s Fifth,” one of the moms said. “Bump-bump-bump-buzz,” she repeated, blaring out the last note.

  I laughed, probably from nerves, and we went inside, ready to set up. It was a good thing I’d taken a nap and pic
ked up an extra-large coffee to prepare for the trade show.

  We’d all pitched in to rent the banquet hall, a large round room with windows looking out over the golf course. Somehow because of my experience at farmers’ markets, I’d been put in charge of assigning all the booths—a thankless task—and creating the SPM Scavenger Hunt—another thankless task. Guests who visited each of our booths and got a stamp inked on the form could win a grand prize of a basket full of goodies from all the vendors.

  I wasn’t sure how the evening would play out so I’d left Trouble at home. Bronx Innis stopped me as I was unloading boxes. “I need electrical tape!” she said. She had a mobile pet grooming business, and had come up with the idea of a puppy petting booth for the trade show. “There are extension cords running right through my space.”

  “I have a roll in my car,” I reassured her. My farmers’ market experience was paying off. “I’ll bring it over.”

  Then Daria Valdez grabbed my arm. I fumbled my box and nearly dumped my cans of assorted Meowio Batali food.

  “Sorry,” she said, “But my booth can NOT be near Mona’s.” Her face was red with anger. Then she took a deep breath and spoke more calmly. “We have competing products, so it makes more sense to keep us far apart.”

  Daria was a BeesWax Party consultant, marketing the overpriced candles Lani and I laughed about, and Mona Hayworth ran Spicy Parties selling massage oils, lingerie, and other “adult” products.

  Mona strolled over, and I realized the real problem. In keeping with her risqué goods, she was wearing a black satin robe that was more suited for the Playboy Mansion than a family trade show.

  Before Mona could say anything, Gina Pace rushed in front of her. “Why am I all the way in the back?” she asked, flipping her blond ponytail over her shoulder. “I’ll get no traffic at all.” Gina ran, literally, the Mommy and Me exercise classes where moms with babies in joggers dashed all over Sunnyside, losing their pregnancy weight at record speed.